Aftermath
by ilurandir
Summary: Somewhere in between White reaching out to Black in the playground and the rest of their lives, Black and White struggle against their inner demons, and try to prevent the walls appearing between them.  "Don't worry White, no one will ever break us apart.


It is when White looks over at Black that he starts to really think about it. He sees the silhouetted shape of him in the darkness of that room that the police had given to him - still plastered with the crayoned drawings that he'd drawn when he was stuck here… after Black had abandoned him. Let the police push him into the van and take him away…

White still doesn't understand why Black did that. _"I'll find a different partner,"_ he'd said.

_"Do you think anyone else would be with you?"_ White had screamed, the cut in his side exploded with white-hot pain where the stitches were pulling and tearing, but he'd only noticed it after. He looks up at the ceiling as he remembers, watching the darkness there swirl into a kind of muted blue, and cloud-filled sky.

He'd never been one to complain about pain. He'd learned that when he was very young. It never really bothered him that much anyway.

He can feel the stitches now, if he concentrates on them - fixed up a little by a nurse who had come to visit. A nice, mousy, soft-spoken lady, with thick glasses and a whispery voice. White had liked her well enough, but her hands had been cold.

When he told her that the planet Venus looked like a star but it really wasn't, and that some people thought there was a man in the moon instead of a rabbit she had smiled at him, but didn't say a word.

He runs his fingers along it now, and it feels like a stem, with leaves just separating themselves from its length, bump, bump, bump, all the way up to his ribcage, where the press of his ribs under his skin felt more human and less plant-like. He pulls his hand away and looks back at Black, who hadn't moved.

Black had always been a restless sleeper. White never told him so, but sometimes Black's tossing and turning in the driver's seat next to him (in their little car that served as home) woke him up at night. Sometimes Black pleaded with someone or something in his sleep. White didn't like those nights. He couldn't sleep then. Because Black never asked for anything. Never.

White had asked him about it once, and Black had hit him hard in the shoulder with a closed fist. Then he pulled his goggles down over his eyes and shoved his hands in his pockets and said "Be happy, White, be happy."

_Be happy, be happy._

Black's hair has grown long, and hangs ragged and jagged down to his chin. He always said he kept it short because in a fight it's better to have less things that they can grab onto.

_"That's why you never pierced your ears or anything, right, Black? Right?"_

White curls onto his side and draws his knees up to his chest, rubbing his fingers underneath his nose, and then back over his right cheek. He can feel the rise of the mole underneath his eye. He sniffs. Wipes his upper lip again. He needs to blow his nose, but his toilet paper is all the way across the room. He uses his bedsheets instead.

Black hasn't moved in a long time. Usually he is such a light sleeper. White decides that he doesn't like it. In his heart, he begins to get a bad feeling. He curls up tighter, into himself, his eyes fixed on what he can see of Black in the darkness.

~*~

There is something in Black's throat that swells and swells until it hurts his chest, and clenches his belly. He felt so tired when he closed his eyes, and the bed was so soft and warm - it's been nine years since he slept in a bed.

He is only thirteen.

Shutting his eyes had been a mistake, because there, suddenly is the... what? The _feeling_ of the Minotaur. Faint at first - at first he can't place it, and then he does. And he pictures it walking silently down the hall towards the room, slipping silently into the door. _If I stay still_, Black thinks desperately to himself _If I don't move at all, he'll go away._

And so he does just that. He doesn't move a muscle, although everything in his body is vibrating and his heart has been pounding out an agitato for the last hundred years, it seems, and he's so scared, so fucking scared that if he opens his eyes now, the red-eyes, hidden behind that skull-mask of the bull will be there, standing over him, and those hands will reach out and cup his face and White will be- _No, no, no, no,_ no, he can't think about it now. God, oh God, he feels sick. He tries to swallow and can't.

It grows stronger, that _feeling_. Underneath the covers, his fingers fist and twist in the sheets.

Suddenly the mattress he is on dips, and he lets out an involuntary gasp and lashes out with a lightning-fast kick, and one of his fingernails has caught in the sheets. He feels it tear, and there is the sharp spike of pain as his nail breaks to the quick, and further, and the sheets release their hold, and a warm trickle of blood stains the white cloth. He cries out, and whether it's pain or terror, he can't tell.

In his panic, he's opened his eyes. White is there, dodging Black's foot quick as a cat, quick as a flash, and he's climbed onto the bed, his skinny, and skinned knees next to Black's face, and he's talking, but Black can't hear a word over his own fucking heartbeat.

For a moment they sit and stare at each other, Black half reclining, White body pinning him underneath the blankets on one side, one of Black's naked legs hanging out from under the covers. His heel hits the cold metal of the box spring.

The door opens and Sawada is there in the doorway, bright light from the hallway spilling in. Black doesn't even get angry that someone is spying on them - keeping such a close watch as though they are innocent children. He takes the opportunity, takes advantage of the light, to look around the room, but there is no Minotaur, and White is still here, and he, Black, is all right, except for the blood drying on the sheets, and his own shattered mind.

Both boys look at Sawada. He looks back at them over his rose tinted sunglasses, and then he says "Everything all right?"

"Roger that, Sawada," White says in a soft, low voice. One Black's only heard him use when he's very tired, or very far away.

Sawada hesitates, then finally closes the door. The room is plunged into darkness again.

When White's eyes adjust he can see Black looking at him in the darkness. The scarred eye - his right, looks more human, more alive than his undamaged left. White has always thought that. He reached out and strokes his thumb underneath his undamaged eye and Black flinches, then calms.

Then he says "Go back to bed, buddy."

"Were you having a bad dream?"

"No."

"When I has a bad dream I make patterns with stars," White says seriously, dropping his head back on his neck with unnerving ease and looking straight up.

"There are no stars. Just the ceiling," Black informs him, pulling his leg back under the covers and shifting away from White and his gentle hands, just a little. His fingers smell like crayon wax. And it feels strange, being touched for so long. White looks down at him.

"No, Black," he says, and without being invited, worms his way underneath the covers to press his body against the older boy. He scrabbles for Black's hand underneath the sheets and Black doesn't fight it, although his finger fucking hurts and White's hit it. He can see the blood pooling dark and bruise-like under his nail bed as White messily entwines their fingers in the air and then drops their joined hands carelessly on top of the covers, And he doesn't say anything as White hooks their arms instead and turns onto his back, so they are lying side by side.

He points to the ceiling with his free hand where there is nothing but black and says. "See?"

He traces an absurd shape in the air and says. "That's our car." He does another. "And now it's a dragon."

Black closes his eyes for a moment, too tired for this, too overwhelmed. He hasn't been this close to White in years - they never touch, and now he can feel his sharp hip and his sharp knee and his sharp shoulder digging into his own sharp body and it is too much.

He remembers how he felt when he thought that White had been shot in his arms. When he thinks back on it now, he can't remember if there was blood or… snow.

He hates that it is so easy to feel that feeling again.

White nudges him none too gently, using his whole body to jostle Black, and his eyes snap open again.

"You can't see the stars if you don't look Black, _ne_." And he points again and says "A fish." And then "A seashell."

And Black turns his head to look at White and White looks at him and smiles. His missing front tooth makes him look younger than he is. Black knows it will never grow back in again.  
>He knows how it was knocked out too. He knows everything there is to know about White, and, it seems, nothing.<p>

He can't see the stars on-or-past the ceiling like White can, but when White opens his eyes to meet Black's and his grin changes from cheeky to real happiness, Black thinks that maybe he can at least see one or two.

Under the covers his body relaxes into White's, and suddenly his bones, and the world… it doesn't all seem so sharp anymore.

-

_* The Japanese say that there is a rabbit in the moon, instead of a man. Now that I know that, it's hard not to see it. Check it out next time!_

**A/N: Please read and review. Nothing beats having a tonne of visits to a story and no reviews. That's why we post our work. Otherwise it would just sit on our harddrives. It's HUGELY appreciated.**


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